Nigella pens love letter to Italian cooking

By LOIS ABRAHAM The Canadian PressPublished February 23, 2013 - 1:00am Last Updated February 23, 2013 - 9:10am

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TV personality offers cookbook of classics

Nigella Lawson went to Italy after high school, and says her cooking has been informed by that country’s cuisine ever since. Her new book is called Nigelissima: Easy Italian-­inspired Recipes. (FRANK GUNN / CP)

“I fell in love with Italy even before I went there. I just kind of decided I needed to be Italian,” said Lawson, who was in Toronto to promote the book and appear at the unveiling of Chatelaine magazine’s newly renovated test kitchen.

“Italian food has informed everything I do in the kitchen because obviously I went there at such a formative age.

“And so I thought why don’t I talk about the way in which it’s inspired me and the way which it affects and informs the recipes I cook that are intrinsically Italian, so that interested me an awful lot. It’s kind of a love letter to Italian food.”

She said with 500 Italian titles in her “obsessive cookbook collection,” she doesn’t expect to do anything new, but notes that Nigellissima is an everyday cookbook with easy recipes. The book has also already been translated into Italian.

“It’s so nice to be able to cook with a handful of ingredients, most of which you can have at home and which doesn’t require you to challenge yourself at the end of a busy day.”

Lawson, 53, has three teenagers — 19-year-old daughter Cosima (Mimi), 18-year-old stepdaughter Phoebe and son Bruno, 16 — and, like many mothers, she’s had to deal with picky eating.

“The difficulty with three is that the number of ingredients that all three will eat is restricted,” she said. One won’t eat bananas and one dislikes tomatoes, while another absolutely loves tomatoes.

One go-to recipe is minestrone, which she has included in Nigellissima. She finds the soup is also a good way to get vegetables into her brood. They also like pasta as well as an easy meatball dish included in the book. She simply squeezes the meat out of Italian sausages, in which the ingredients are already mixed, and rolls it into balls.

“I cook the same way my readers do. In other words, I’ve got family, I’ve got a job, I’m not trained. I don’t know how to chop a carrot with virtuoso speed, so my context is very similar,” Lawson said.

The author of seven other books, including How To Be a Domestic Goddess, Feast and Nigella Bites, Lawson is also seen on television’s The Taste with New York chef Anthony Bourdain, which launched last month on CTV and ABC. TV chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Brian Malarkey are also on the panel that judges the contestants — amateur and professional cooks — by sampling just one spoonful of their food without knowing who cooked it or what ingredients they used, and then voting them on or off accordingly.

It was “so everything I would never have thought I would do,” Lawson said. But she liked the premise that the judges taste blind.

“You don’t know whose food you’re tasting which means that you’re never making personal attacks on people because I can’t stand that contemporary TV of cruelty. It makes me very uncomfortable and I didn’t want any part of that.”

She said she doesn’t see herself as the voice of authority, but she loved offering constructive criticism. “I felt the point is to encourage people, not to crush them.”

Here are two recipes from Nigellissima: Easy Italian-Inspired Recipes.

CURLY-EDGED PASTA WITH LAMB RAGU

This is one of Nigella Lawson’s go-to weeknight suppers. She says you can cook the ragu longer at a lower heat, if desired, but it’s also perfect as is. This recipe calls for pappardelle — those egg-rich, wide ribbons — but you can use whatever type of pasta you have on hand.

22 ml (1 1/2 tbsp) garlic-infused olive oil

1 banana shallot, chopped

5 ml (1 tsp) dried mint

5 ml (1 tsp) oregano

1 ml (1/4 tsp) crushed red pepper flakes

250 g (8 oz) ground lamb

1 can (398 ml/14 oz) diced tomatoes

10 ml (2 tsp) red currant jelly

7 ml (11/2 tsp) Worcestershire sauce

Pinch salt, plus more for pasta water

Freshly ground pepper

250 g (8 oz) pappardelle

Handful fresh mint, to garnish (optional)

Put large pan of water on to boil for pasta and warm garlic oil in small, heavy-based pan that comes with a lid; cook shallots, stirring for a minute or so.

Sprinkle in mint, oregano and red pepper flakes, stirring again in hot pan before adding meat. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to break it up with a wooden spatula or spoon, until it loses a bit of its pinkness.

Add tomatoes, red currant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, salt and some grindings of pepper, then give a good stir and bring to a bubble. Partially cover with the lid and simmer for 20 minutes.

At the appropriate time, salt the boiling water and cook pasta according to package instructions, making sure to check for readiness a couple of minutes before it’s supposed to be done. Once cooked and not-too-efficiently drained, return pasta to pan and dress with lamb ragu.

Sprinkle a little bit of fresh mint onto each bowl, if desired, to serve.

Makes 2 servings.

CHOCOLATE OLIVE OIL CAKE

Nigella Lawson said she made this cake for a friend who had been diagnosed with celiac disease. It’s also dairy- and gluten-free. It’s “very, very, very easy.”

The cake is delicious served warm, with some raspberries or other berries on the side, as well as a dollop of mascarpone or ice cream.

150 ml (2/3 cup) regular olive oil (plus more for greasing)

90 ml (6 tbsp) good-quality unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

125 ml (1/2 cup) boiling water

10 ml (2 tsp) best vanilla extract

375 ml (11/2 cups) almond meal (flour)

or 175 ml (3/4 cup) plus 15 ml (1 tbsp)

all-purpose flour

2 ml (1/2 tsp) baking soda

Pinch salt

250 ml (1 cup) superfine sugar

3 eggs

Heat oven to 160 C (325 F). Grease a 23-cm (9-inch) springform pan with a little oil and line base with parchment.

Measure and sift cocoa powder into a bowl or pitcher and whisk in boiling water until you have a smooth, chocolatey, still runny (but only just) paste. Whisk in vanilla, then set aside to cool a little.

In another smallish bowl, combine almond meal with baking soda and salt.

Put sugar, olive oil and eggs into bowl of a freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment (or other bowl and whisk arrangement of your choice) and beat together vigorously for about 3 minutes until you have a pale-primrose, aerated and thickened cream.

Turn speed down a little and pour in cocoa mixture, beating as you go, and when all is scraped in, you can slowly tip in almond meal mixture.

Scrape down, and stir a little with a spatula, then pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until sides are set and the very centre, on top, still looks slightly damp. A cake tester should come up mainly clean but with a few sticky chocolate crumbs clinging to it.

Let cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack, still in its pan, and then ease sides of the cake with a small metal spatula and spring it out of the pan. Leave to cool completely or eat while still warm.